Considering that I love to learn and plan on sticking myself in institutions of higher learning for the next several years, why is it that yet again, school is causing me to fade? High school killed the me that I once was. As a college freshman, I was still a burnt out shell of a person, bitter and depressed. As a sophomore, I had a year of recovery and progress, renewing myself ... but this time around as a junior, it's like I'm somehow making the same mistakes and starting to constantly feel the same way as I did by the time I made it through high school. This pointless misery makes me sick, yet it is so hard to climb out of!

The feeling is like the dream where you are flailing, trying to run through Saran-wrap. You expend an incredible amount of effort for very little, slow gain. You can't get anywhere fast enough to make anyone happy.

Last semester was pretty blah, and although the beginning of Spring 2004 was okay, the blahness is starting to return. Something, at a variety of levels within my consciousness, has faltered. I cannot work as I wish to, some drive is lacking, while this useless tension fills its place. I can't write (I'm sure you've noticed this one). I am convinced that my life is mundane, halfway on the edge to worthless. I feel unfocused, useless. I have a letter on my desk about my unsatisfactory 3.38 GPA ... and it doesn't inspire me to work any harder. Fear about it tightens my body, but can no longer propel me forward.

I will never find you.

...

Roomdraw is coming up ... and I've been fairly withdrawn on the subject with my roommates. (The four of us live in a "quad," four singles and two bathrooms attached to a larger common room.) Though I've been quiet, in reality I'm fairly frustrated that the others insist on having single rooms if at all possible. To me, it seems like taking unnecessary risks, needlessly courting a year's worth of perpetual irritation.

Roommates happen. Living with annoying people happens. Learning how to put up with it happens. You've never spent semesters with a roommate, and I have. I've been through three of 'em, two of these were bad, and one was good. Based on my experience (which does include two people with a lot of stuff trying to fit into the smallest dorm room on campus), I would rather avoid disaster and stay with people I know I get along with.

Single rooms on campus = hard to come by, double = standard. We are in the Quad by sheer luck alone. Therefore, let us avert disaster by rooming together. If I wind up giving in on the Woods apartment issue, I would feel ... wounded, in a way. Let me condense all my complaints about that complex into a single sentence: I don't feel safe there, and I don't think I would be happy.

Well, my uneducated suspicion based on your flailing post is that you are trying to do too many things well at once, and so end up stressed out and only doing things ok. I guess the question would be, what are you trying to get out of college? Friends? A high GPA? Practical knowlege? A job? Money? Sex? What??

Freshman year, I think it was to get away from everything "back home," including responsibilities like clubs and volunteering and whatnot. I refused to join any more than one "extracurricular" club, did not take part in organizations similar to ones I had left in high school.

Sophomore year, it was to find a new place to belong. Accomplished that, sort of. I think that's kind of falling away, now, though, due to events that occurred in the art school in previous semesters.

Junior year ... right now the only thing I can think of is to get the hell out of here on time. I just want to get through it so I can get on with it. o_o The sense of home is gone. I want a more focused study ... I want courses I can't get here.

Get out on time with a degree? I can't help you there, I'm a burnt-out dropout at the moment, but the recommendation of my friend Chris who has accomplished this feat, is to make sure to get classes with slack teachers, that complete the appropriate credit requirements, but ask very little of you, both work-wise and time-wise, in return. :P

Finding classes such as these can be an art form, but can be particularly painful for certain sorts of people (like me, for instance) who can't let go of the idea that they went to college to learn something, and who haven't quite accepted that doing well in a course on, say, History, for instance, and actually learning something useful about history are two completely different (and sometimes due to time constraints, conflicting) things. :P

If you were blessed without this particular hangup, then geting through college on time shouldn't be too difficult. ;) Just be consistent and clever about it, and you'll have your sheepskin in no time. :)

If you want to genuinely learn stuff, especially things which don't require so much hands-on training, (welding, cooking, etc.) all you need is a chunk of free time, an internet terminal, and a library with a good interlibrary loan program. ;) Independent study & research isn't so hard on it's own, and is actually pretty fun if you don't have some sort of phantom assignment lurking ominously over your head. But then I'm a big nerd, so your mileage may vary. :)